Almost Got Skunked, Jan 2nd

Rootbeer Midge, Size 18Real life midgeBeaver DamMy fishing spot today, lots of cover over and behind meClose up of the real life midge

Another great day to hit the water for the New Year. Fishing was a little tough this morning. I only managed to land one fish on a Rootbeer Midge and that was after I had tried nearly everything in my fly box.

When I got to the Beaver Tailwaters around 9:30am, I found they had generated this morning and the water level was still elevated. Glad I slept in and did a couple reports for work before I left the house. The generation schedule said they weren’t going to generate today, so it was a bit of a surprise. I attempted to cross the river where I usually do and found the water to be deeper than it looked. I started to do the Man on the Moon walk to finish the crossing, but the water kept getting deeper. Every time I bounced off my tippy toes, the water pushed me down stream to the deeper water. I turned around to go back, but now I was in much deeper water and right up to the top of my waders. I bounced my way back to shallower water, but not before I took on a little water. Luckily it was just a cup or so or that would have ended my morning of fishing pretty quickly.

I couldn’t cross the river to fish where I wanted so I was forced to stay on the near bank where there’s lot of trees and cover. I had to roll cast all morning. That is something I don’t like doing very much because it’s not as fun and I’m not as strong with it, but it was the only option. I threw midges, micro jigs, worms, soft hackle and eggs at them. I got a couple little nibbles on an egg pattern, but they were so subtle and so quick I couldn’t get the set fast enough. Landed one with the Rootbeer Midge and had a solid hook up with the Ruby Midge, but it got off a few feet from me.

There were lots of midges on the surface so I picked one up and examined it for a bit and got a couple pictures that I’ve shown above. I never realized how small and translucent they are. They are more of gray color in real life, I guess that’s why the Blue Dun (gray) color works so well. With all those on the surface there was very little surface activity from the fish. The fish were holding pretty tight to wherever they were hiding today.

Temperature was in the high 30’s with a pretty constant drizzle. The water stayed high for the couple hours I fished, not sure why it didn’t continue to drop. It usually is back to normal levels within a couple of hours after they stop generating so they must have left a partial generator on or something.